I used to aspire to 10 minutes a day; now I blog conference presentations and the occasional reflection.

Friday, November 07, 2008

GPACW 2: Pedagogies

Les Loncharich from MSU is revisiting the issue of "from analysis to design." Arguing for "visual composition" as distinct from "visual design;" we are concerned with rhetoric; designers less so. Les is sketching a research agenda for himself; looking for feedback from us.

Geoff Sauer's "Teaching with Databases and (Against?) the Textbook," draws on his experience working with Intro to Technical Writing (314); exploring a tension between the clarity and coherence of the textbook and the messiness of real life (e.g. the resume). Eserver provides filtered access to practitioner articles; Geoff argues that rhetoric and composition should be building a similar database that would supplement textbook instruction.

Alexandra Pickens, "The Impact of Media in the Writing Classroom: A theoretical and pragmatic approach." Provided some context from St. Cloud U: mix of smart classrooms and no-tech classrooms; given opportunities to teach in smart classrooms without context. Does a nice job of looking at specific technologies (i.e. a doc cam creates a community reading experience; handouts create isolation).

One of the other presentations going on write now is looking at the potential of Photo Story 3: Could be useful for the photo essay assignment, although it might smooth stuff out too much.